By: M. Patton
Baltimore, MD - As a longtime Sabres fan, this writer knows a good American hockey town. If the Pens play next year, and many years after, in any city other than Steel Town, it will be nothing short of a tragedy for the game and the league.
After yesterday's report that talks between the Pens and government officials have broken down and the Pens are once again shopping themselves to other cities, one can only hope that it is a political tactic by the Pens to try to get some leverage in the negotiations for a new arena deal.
There is no silver lining should the unthinkable happen and the Pens move to a place like Kansas City. Pittsburgh losing the Pens would represent the league losing one of its most important historical commodities, as well as a team that dresses some the league's most important long term assets. With names like Crosby, Malkin, and Staal, there is too much potential on that team to trust a city that is new to hockey to provide a fan base passionate enough to support a team like that.
The other point is that the league needs to solidify its base in the most passionate hockey towns again before it can even think about continuing it's Southern and Midwestern experiments. Let's face it, there have already been numerous reports about attendance concerns in these southern cities, even in places with good teams like Atlanta and Nashville. It's one thing to hand an expansion team to a new city, but to hand a team with much of hockey's best future talent would be nothing short of betting all your chips on double zero.
The Pens organization, the city of Pittsburgh, and the league need to work together, get back into that room and get this thing done. There is too much at stake for these groups to just step back and say there is an impasse. This isn't just a Pittsburgh concern, it's a concern of all small market, blue-collar hockey towns.
No comments:
Post a Comment